Friday, 9 December 2011

The Dorothy Delusion - part 2

The Siberian looked over the men in front of him. You
couldn’t deny their muscle but that wasn’t why he was hiring them. They had a
reputation for being smart. Not his kind of smart, there wasn’t a whole lot
that approached his kind of smart, but smarter than your average bear. And they
knew the City, they worked the City and they didn’t get caught, which was
impressive when you knew the City had the biggest urban law enforcement budget
in the world, the best tech and the sharpest officers.

These men played at being hoods and gangsters, but with a
knowing humour. They were strangely anachronistic in the modern world and he suspected they
liked it that way.

The Siberian was a tactician of the highest order. But the
problem with brilliantly cunning plans was that you had to count on less
brilliant people to execute them. Which was what had gone wrong, which was why
he needed these men to help him fix it.

“Gentlemen. Mister Rollins.”

He let that one sit for a second.

Munch growled, his real name was not public knowledge, it
afforded his dear mother some protection. But there were no lengths of retribution the Siberian would not go to and he felt
that an important fact to establish early on, to curtail anything which
might lead to the necessity of such retribution.

“I’ve lost a package, I’m reliably informed it’s somewhere
in the City.”

“No offense, Gov, but we’re not the postal service.”

“Ain’t lost and found either,” Fingers added.

“Ah, let me elaborate. This package is about one and a half
metres tall, red hair, green eyes, the most delightful freckles. Not quite, ha
ha, herself.”

The Siberian produced a photo.

“I need the package alive, but beyond that, well, you’re not
the postal service, so I expect you can manage it at least reasonably
undamaged.”

****

There weren’t many people who could draw Leon from his woodland retreat, but one of them was missing, and another had requested a face-to-face, so a compromise was reached and here he was, a wooded park, on the outskirts of the City, uncomfortable territory for both of them. He rubbed his temples. Cities were too sterile, it took
too much to disturb them, made it harder to tell when someone was coming.

His team had arrived early and settled. This tiny pocket of
nature had resumed its natural rhythms and the dissonant clamour of the City
was muted. He listened. He could hear the bustle of rats in the undergrowth,
the patter of squirrels over branches, the rustle of the wind through drying
leaves. Autumn was fast approaching.

He turned his hands in front of his face, fascinated
by the dusty hue that had crept into his dark skin the past few years, like old
chocolate half-remembered and rediscovered; which was not far from how he felt,
now. He flexed his fingers, grimly amused at the insidious twinges of pain. For
him, Autumn was already here.

The bird chatter changed, panic, a blackbird’s warning cry. Leon heard tread, a twig snapping. He didn’t need the whisper of his perimeter
guard to know they had company. The guard attached video, but he didn’t open
it.

“Still jumpy, Lion?”

A thin figure, impeccably dressed, entered the clearing and stood
beside the chair opposite Leon’s. He wore a grey, tailored suit, so well cut
most people wouldn’t have realised there was a small pistol holstered beneath; his
head was shaved close to the skull but you could see his hair had gone
silver; he was wearing wire-rimmed glasses and he supported himself on a thin
cane. In the old days Leon would never have heard him coming.

“You get rusty, Tin Man?”

The cane was new. It might have been a concession to age or,
knowing him, it might equally have been for show, camouflage. The glasses were
old, and they were camouflage too, or maybe he needed them now. Leon thought it
more likely he wore contacts and kept the glasses as a prop.

Leon rose and they shook hands, then settled into the chairs
and considered each other.

The Tin Man’s voice was thin but not frail, never frail. “Dorothy
is here, in the City.”

“That can’t be the good news it seems. Or you wouldn’t have
called me.”

“We don’t know where in the City. And you have the
resources here, the man power, the connections you have always hidden behind.”

Leon didn't rise to the bait. He was alive, and older
than most people in this business, because he didn’t put himself at risk.

7 comments:

Oh, this is getting surreal. The Siberian = good witch of the north then? and the thugs are the Munchkins… just picked that up from last week. This is going to be one heck of a trip, no acid required! :-D

I didn't notice this last week, I like the way you mixed Oz into this futuristic caper. It provides a nice thread on which to hang the tale, particularly since there is a sizable cast and some complicated interplay.

Fiction should take on a life of its own in people's minds. Anything I write should become a seed that germinates in your mind and grows into something more. I give you fragments and hope to inspire your imagination to create wider worlds.